Scream

K asks why I put up Edvard Munch's The Scream as the theme photo of my blog.

I know very little about the Norwegian artist. The paint is of course famous enough. Yes, a man cries out for the overwhelming environment. What is he screaming for ? Which question in life scared him so much ? Or was it the answer that he came to realize ? You look at it and say to yourself: the man is screaming for this and that. Oh, this is actually what you wish to scream for. This is not a paint - but a mirror.

No, there's more in it. The sky was red actually as a result of the eruption of volcano Krakatoa from Indonesia. Yes, it was tens of months ago and thousands of miles away - that's the shocking bit. The explosion was in Pacific, but the sky turned red in Norway - and the whole of Europe; temperature of the globe dropped by 2 degrees, all rain became acidic, agricultural production fell for some years, followed by several political repercussion. This was the time when modern world first saw the effect of globalization and pollution. We were first aware of and should worry about existence - of our own self, and of mankind.

PS. The eruption was in 1883, and the paint 1893. It was a remarkable era. The Qing Empire was gasping after the Taiping Rebellion (太平天國) - not knowing the worst was yet to come. Queen Victoria, on the other hand, was enjoying the best time of her kingdom, and the first underground began to run in London. (Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes were both a few years later.) In the same city, nonetheless, Karl Marx was about to finish his most abused masterpiece. Above all, Nietzsche declared god was dead, and we have to make decisions ourselves.